I Drink Your Blood (1971) User Reviews (81)

With pies that are this tasty, there's no need for sauce!

[lost-in-limbo · 7/10 · 13 July 2006]

A group of Satanist hippies roll into a small quiet town and ruffle a few feathers of the locals, since they attacked one of their girls. So the girl's grandfather tries to set things straight with them, but they forcefully make him swallow a LSD cocktail. Wanting revenge for what they had done to his grandfather, a young boy feeds them pies, which have been injected with rabies from a dead dog. Slowly they start to feel the effects and they turn into homicidal maniacs hell-bent on destroying or contaminating anything that crosses their path.

Rabies and hippies, who show their faith in the dark lord. What a freak out! Now, there's no doubts this cheesy delight is wild 'n' wacky fun for the undemanding and was one of the first films to be influenced by Romero's "Night of Living Dead". This memorably sleazy and in bad-taste drive-in, exploitation flick scrapes the bottom of the barrel in the budget restraints, but despite that, it's surprisingly competent. It doesn't stop the sheer flow of comic entertainment, and might I add, this foaming madness is damn hilarious. After eating the very yummy looking pies that the smart little fella messed around with, you'll get a kick out of how the eccentric bunch transform into feral beings and basically going spas, leaving some very nasty splatter behind. The scenes involving water being splashed about is incredibly rib tickling. The acting is extremely fruity, but I thought that it was more than acceptable for this sort of film. George Patterson and Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury were a riot as some of the hippies. Also Lynn Lowry appears in the group. Jack Damon and Elizabeth Marner-Brooks play the more steady heads of the town and they're fine in their roles. While, it might be funny, it still does offer up some nail-biting tension, flash pacing and one or two decent surprises amongst this enjoyably (and sometimes quite) original idea. But oh my, wait to you get your head around the spotty experimental score with its array of funky and otherworldly sounds. The story and fluffy script might leave some loose ends left untied, but the score definitely doesn't.

Simply put, this hocus-pocus was compellingly dumb and scummy fun that has one real cruel edge to it! Well-deserving of its cult status.

Annoyingly fun

[Vastarien202 · 7/10 · 31 January 2007]

I recently saw this forgotten gem, and I had a great time! Satan-worshiping hippies, a dead goat, lots of rats and plenty of nudity;what's not to like? Well, there were a few things I didn't like, sad to say. First on the list is the "Score". Whoever did this should be locked in a tiny room and forced to listen to it for seventeen hours in THX. Basically, it's a car alarm and drums looped over and over at increasingly harsh frequencies, making the audience long for the sweet low tones of a dentist's drill. Second on the list is the distracted acting. It's as if everyone in the town was eating prozac like skittles between takes. Aside from those two peeves, I had a blast watching it, and so might you, just remember to use the mute button. You'll need it.

Where is Louis Pasteur When You Need Him?

[BaronBl00d · 14 April 2001]

A band of devil-worshipping hippies take root in a small town that has been evacuated save a group of construction workers, a baker, and a family led by Grandpa the veterinarian. While holing themselves up in a rat-infested hotel(where the hippies actually play a game of who can kill the most rats for the rat barbecue), they are confronted by an irate Grandpa the vet. They force him to take some lsd and beat him up. Grandpa's grandson gets back by injecting a dozen meat pies with rabies from a dog he shot later that evening. The hippies go mad and all those people they infect do likewise. This film is rather distasteful, yet strangely interesting. It is definitely a low-budget affair as no one in it has a name and the special effects are extremely poor. The film is markedly gruesome as you see a man stabbed repeatedly, a leg, hand, head chopped off, and crazed hippies with bloody hands wielding axes, a sword, even an electric carving knife! The producer's name does his film great honor...his name is Jerry Gross.

Bhaskar knows best

[Tromafreak · 6/10 · 13 November 2008]

Formerly known as Phobia, I Drink Your Blood is a fine example of raw, unflinching, horror. Horror, with a chip on it's shoulder. Horror with a small budget, a smaller cast, often humorous dialog, but let me tell you, that on this day, there is evil in the air, and it's awfully humid.

A gang of Satan-worshiping hippies, with bad intentions, ends up in a nearly-abandoned town, after their van breaks down. With only a population of 40, the gang figures that this is their town now, so they pick a house, settle in, but soon grow bored with all the acid taking, and rat killing, and take out their frustrations by forcing some acid on a defenseless, old man. I would imagine, forcing LSD on the elderly would be a real keen time for most hippie-satanists. Unfortunately for the gang, the old man's grandson, little Pete, takes offense to this prank, and seeks vengeance for grandpa's psychedelic misery in a way that any level-headed boy would. The portly, little fellow finds a rabid dog, shoots the damn thing, fills up a syringe with the blood, and injects it into some food in the bakery, which would end up in the stomach's of the acid-fueled satanist's. Evil has just got a double-dose of madness, and it's feeling real bad, and that can only mean bad news for the unsuspecting "town" .

Contrary to what I had heard, I Drink Your Blood is not exactly a Lucio Fulci blood bath, or even what I would consider a gore film, in fact, I see no reason why they couldn't have squeezed in an R rating. With that said, gore, or even moderate amounts of blood, ain't everything. I Drink Your Blood, from beginning to end, is a nightmarish hell, with no redeeming qualities. With this one, you can feel the evil, as if it's in the room, with you, plus, the psychotic score, and nerve-racking sound-effects couldn't be more fitting. I recommend I Drink Your Blood to anyone who appreciates quality, low-budget horror from the dark side, but regardless of what Bhaskar tells you, I sincerely doubt Satan was ever an acid head. 8/10

Hippie Dippy Rabies Man

[[e-mail] · 4/10 · 1 March 2006]

I saw this film a while ago when I was on a big Z-grade zombie movie kick. I was not disappointed by this little number. Naturally, there were some problems with the film. The biggest one I can think of is the soundtrack. It sounds like some kids decided to have fun with a synthesizer and the film makers wanted to put it in for kicks. The acting wasn't too good either, but it's obviously on a low budget, so I can forgive that.

The plot is that a group of Satan worshiping hippies come to a small town to wreak havoc on the local population. The hippie bunch end up molesting a local girl and then shacking up in an abandoned hotel. They run afoul of a local brat after feeding his grandfather acid (oh, it was his sister that they molested earlier by the by). So little lord Fauntleroy decides to get even with that counterculture bunch by feeding them rabies laced meat pies (trust me, I'm not making this up). The traveling satanists become blood thirsty cannibals and terrorize the town.

Overall, the film is pretty much a blood and sex packed piece of celluloid, but it's not without its charm. If you're into graphic, low budget violence and shock, this is a film for you. "Citizen Kane" it obviously isn't, but it still manages to retain its overall fun and shock value.

Happy viewings B movie fans.

A laugh a minute!

[preppy-3 · 7/10 · 11 November 2006]

Film starts right off with a nude (male and female) devil worshiping sequence and rapidly gets worse (or better depending on your view). A bunch of devil-worshiping hippies (with a leader named Horace!) come into a small town. They beat up a local girl and her grandfather and give granddad a dose of LSD. Pete decides to avenge his sister and grandfather by infecting rabies into a bunch of meat pies and then giving them to the hippies to eat (!!!!). The hippies do, get rabies and one hippie woman sleeps with a bunch of construction workers and infects THEM! Soon a small bunch of uninfected people are fighting for their lives.

Historically this IS an important film--it was the first film to get an X rating for violence alone (there is nudity but it's within an R rating). It was cut to ribbons to get an R. Now we have the uncut version available. At best it's a mixed blessing.

For starters the acting is terrible across the board--the hippies especially act like a bunch of retarded school children. And the script has some lines that had me gaping in disbelief. Here are a few examples--After giving her boyfriend a big kiss a woman says, "Roger I'm very upset"; "There's no one in the town because of the damn dam!"; "Rape is a little out of an engineers domain"; a man is shot down and someone says, "I have to call the Red Cross--we're in a state of emergency". Then there's the gore effects which are, to be nice, primitive. There is a LOT of blood and violence here but it's all so obviously fake it's hard to take seriously.

Still I was never bored and I was constantly amused by the acting, script and pretty poor production values. Also you do have to give credit to these people--they had no budget and were just out to make a gory horror film. They DID succeed. Also the cast (male and female) are very attractive physically. So--not a forgotten horror classic but I'm glad it's available in it's uncut form. Worth seeing for horror fans.

By the way--there's no drinking of blood.

A no gross Jerry Gross production

[macabro357 · 5/10 · 22 July 2003]

Wow, talk about drive-in fare. The acting is terrible and the dialog is unbelievable and yet this one's kinda campy in it's own way, forcing me to laugh at it in parts.

This DVD supposedly has the original 'X-rated' (for violence) version that the MPAA gave back in '71, but since there really isn't any graphic sex in it, I don't see much of anything 'X-rated' about it.

A hippy cult's van breaks down near a near-deserted town in upstate New York. The hippies rape a local kid's sister and feed his grandfather LSD for kicks. The grandfather's tripping-out scene is pretty funny.

The kid comes up with a brilliant idea for revenge by contaminating some meat pies with rabies-infected blood taken from a dead dog he had shot earlier, and feeding them to the unsuspecting hippies. Most of the hippies eat them (except for two guys) and they start getting feverish and kill one another. The ax scene where the black guy flips out and cuts off the other hippie's leg looks pretty cool.

Next thing ya know, a construction crew from a nearby dam site have sex with one of the hippie girls and get infected that way. Pretty soon, most everyone left in town is foaming at the mouth, especially the black guy who goes running around wide-eyed, looking like a crazed lunatic. It's hilarious.

The Grindhouse DVD has plenty of extras including an alternate downbeat ending (it's quite different from the one they actually used) where Mildred Nash shoots Roger in the mouth in a fit of rabies rage. She was infected earlier when one of the construction workers bit her while she was trying to escape in the old '62 Ford station wagon.

We also get as extras, 2002 interviews with Lynn Lowry (who's aged gracefully), John McCook, David Dunston, etc. They give a quick history behind the making of this film, inspired by (sur-prise!) George Romero.

I'll give it a 5 out of 10 for inspiring a few laughs.

Highly original, expertly-made 1971 horror classic. But be warned . . .

[sdiner82 · 8/10 · 7 August 2003]

I caught "I Drink Your Blood" at a Times Square theater in New York in 1971. I was writing for a long-defunct but excellent film magazine called Filmfacts, where we covered every film given a theatrical release in the U.S.--running the gamut from the boxoffice blockbusters to the schlockiest of drive-in quickies. Filmfacts was a scholarly publication--most of our subscribers were libraries. For each film, we provided a complete list of cast & credits, a summary of critics' reviews, one-to-four stills (if available), and a thorough plot synopsis. Which is why I saw "I Drink Your Blood," expecting another piece of low-budget garbage, and instead being treated to one of the most truly horrific (and little-known) thrillers ever produced. Even though the obviously heavily-edited R-rated version was pretty strong stuff, it still put me through the wringer and I recommended it to the other members of the magazine's staff, who all loved it. The plot has been sufficiently detailed by other reviewers on this invaluable database, but, aside from urging anyone with a cast-iron stomach to sample this unique, feverish, gorgeously photographed nightmare of a movie ("Night of the Living Dead" please step aside), I'd like to clarify the conflicting accounts of the prints of the movie. The one I saw at the theater was rated R by the MPAA. A few months later, I happened to meet a lovely actress named Iris Brooks, who had given a first-rate performance in the film. We became friends and, on the anniversary of the film's completion, Iris invited me and some friends to attend a cast & crew party held at a Times Square theater around midnight (after the theater was cleared out) and the projectionist could show "I Drink Your Blood," followed by a catered but unpretentious party in the downstairs lounge (apparently, everyone involved with making the movie, its grisly subject matter notwithstanding, had a great time and had formed many friendships during the film). However, the print that was screened was not the butchered 'R'-rated version I'd originally seen but the director David Durston's (a sweet, supremely intelligent, friendly man, and a first-rate filmmaker as far as I'm concerned) unedited cut. It was perhaps 8 minutes longer than the censored version shown at theaters. The violent scenes were considerably more graphic and gory, and there were also some innocuous nude scenes that apparently gave Jack Valenti cardiac arrest, hence the butchered version that the distributor was forced to release. I've read that the original, uncut version has finally been unearthed and will be released on DVD. I heartily recommend that any serious movie buff should buy this film (in whatever version, it doesn't really matter) as soon as it hits the video stores. It's a true 'sleeper' that deserves to be re-discovered and appreciated even 30 years after its initial, shoddily-handled brief release. "I Drink Your Blood" is some kind of deranged masterpiece but, despite its controversial elements (even today, it's pretty far out there), it's never offensive and the people who made it are one of the nicest and most talented group of individuals it's ever been my pleasure to meet!

Killer Satanic Hippie Movie... With a Twist

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 2 July 2008]

A Satanic cult, apparently loosely based on the Manson family, moves into a new hunting ground. After terrorizing a local store and the family that operates it, one little boy finds a way to get revenge: infect the killers with rabies. While in the real world this would result in death, in the world of cinema it leads to a massive murder frenzy.

This film came to me highly recommended from the same man who passed along "Spider Baby" and "Dr. Humpp", both impressive and memorable films. It also happens to be the first film rated X for violence, which gives it a strong street credibility, in my opinion. As you may imagine, my expectations were a bit higher than average.

The film starts out a bit slow. Killers, with a strong attachment to Satanism and LSD, drifting from town to town. It's not a particularly interesting plot, and none of the characters -- even the leader (played by Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) -- stand out as anyone worth caring about. The family is a bit more interesting, but for the most part the first half served no real purpose besides building up the potential for a bloody Hatfield and McCoy-style feud. But then the second half came.

Once the gang is infected with rabies (served in tainted meat pies), all heck breaks loose. Foaming at the mouth, thirsty for blood and wielding axes... these maniacs aren't going to rest until everyone in the county is dead. Limbs are hacked off and carried around like trophies. Today this level of violence wouldn't get you an X -- more likely an R or at most an NC-17 if the censors were feeling frisky -- but for the time period you're unlikely to find anything on this level. The blood is on par with Lewis' "Blood Feast", if not surpassing it.

I don't feel that "I Drink Your Blood" is a must see. I wouldn't rank it as high as "Spider Baby" or "Dr. Humpp", for example. However, I also wouldn't call this a don't-see film. It had all the exploitation and gore that any classic horror fan would be looking for, and it would scare the pants off your grandmother if she wasn't already dead. If your grandmother even wears pants, that is. Let's put it like this: if you get a chance to catch this movie, catch it, but don't go out of your way to put it at the front of your Netflix queue.

This is only for the true lovers of cult exploitation films, it could've been a lot better...

[eminkl · 5/10 · 22 April 2020]

This movie was very disappointing. It started out as intriguing and unsettling, but later just turns into this tedious and crazy mess. Satanic, burnt-out hippies spreading murderous havoc had a lot of potential for a good horror film. It felt like a mix between Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Cronenberg's Rabid (1977). But unfortunately, the script is a mess, the acting is pretty bad, and it just makes the flick boring. The only things that redeem it a little is the buckets of enjoyable, cheap gore, and surprisingly, the music is actually pretty good.

As if they weren't crazy enough to start with.

[BA_Harrison · 8/10 · 28 May 2020]

Pete Banner (Riley Mills), his pretty older sister Sylvia (Iris Brooks), and their gramps, Doc. Banner (Richard Bowler), sure don't have much in the way of smarts.

When Sylvia catches hippie Andy (Tyde Kierney) stealing a chicken for use in a black magic ritual, she doesn't call the police: instead, she lets him take the bird, just so long as she can spy on Andy and his pals performing their ceremony. Spotted lurking in the woods by the naked Satanists, the girl is pursued, beaten and abused. In retrospect, calling 911 would have been the wiser option.

Gramps also displays a remarkable lack of common sense. When Sylvia is found in a catatonic state, he quite rightly thinks that the gang of hippies staying at the local deserted hotel are responsible. However, rather than contact the sheriff (does this family not own a phone?), the old man grabs his shotgun and goes it alone to have it out with the drug-crazed drop-outs. One doddery pensioner against eight devil-worshipping lunatics on L.S.D. -- unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well for Doc. Banner.

As for young Pete, he has to be the stupidest of the lot: in order to take revenge, the lad extracts blood from a rabid dog and injects it into a tray of meat pies that he sells to the hippies. Soon, instead of lawless Satanists, the town is under siege from crazed maniacs foaming at the mouth (I wonder how many tubes of toothpaste went into the making of this film) with a lust for blood who can pass on the deadly disease via a bite. Pretty soon, there are machete wielding maniacs everywhere!

Produced by exploitation movie legend Jerry Gross, and written and directed by David Durston, I Drink Your Blood is exactly what a drive-in/grindhouse movie should be: cheap, totally trashy, with over-the-top performances, gratuitous nudity and plenty of gore. It takes until the halfway point to really get into full swing, but when it does, the film is an absolute blast.

The mayhem starts proper as Manson-like cult leader Horace (played with wild-eyed relish by Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) and his followers start to feel the effects of the rabies, black Satanist Rollo (George Patterson) being the first to go full-on bonkers, stabbing fellow hippie Shelley in the gut with a dagger and then hacking off his foot with an axe. The rest soon follow suit, with cultist Molly (Rhonda Fultz) infecting a whole crew of construction workers (with rabies, although they might well have contracted something else as well), making matters even worse. Meanwhile, Sylvia and uninfected Andy (now a couple, the girl having bounced back from her earlier ordeal) and Pete try to avoid being sliced and diced until construction site foreman Roger Davis (John Damo) can alert the authorities.

I Drink Your Blood was one of the first films to be rated X by the MPA based on its violence, and its easy to see why: there are plenty of shocking scenes of brutality, with an evisceration, an uncredited Lynn Lowry (who appeared in George Romero's similarly themed The Crazies) cutting off a woman's hand with an electric carving knife, a pregnant woman impaling herself with a stake, self-immolation, a pitchfork in the throat, a sword in the back and out of the mouth, and my favourite moment, the shock decapitation of a major character, the victim's head carried around by the killer. As I watched the violence escalate, my rating kept getting higher and higher!

A neat downbeat ending tops off what is a hugely entertaining exploitation classic that demands to be seen by any self-respecting gore-hound or trash movie aficionado.

'The mind reduced to the level of an animal, capable of the most savage acts'

[Cristi_Ciopron · 6/10 · 3 March 2010]

The movie is bizarrely ineffective and lacking in flair, like so many nowadays mainstream horror flicks as inept as this one; though quite violent, it doesn't really scare. In a sense, it has some qualities to be praised—like the way it's written, or some good sense in the directing, some form of almost mainstream and practical approach of a sensationalist subject. It has some common sense; but no flair …. I pretended not to notice its side of social awareness—the perils of the youth's dissolute life, the LSD, the debauchery of the workmen as a way of infection …. It tries to be even a zombie movie, and the scene of the rabid, foaming workmen's attack is deeply laughable, such rubbish ….

Why does the geezer examine that blood sample? Did he use to examine each stain of blood he ever found? I mean, it's not like he ain't my favorite movie physician, yet …. Anyway, it looks like he examined the blood because he already had inferred from Mildred's description that the blood was on the hands of a possibly rabid human.

I DRINK YOUR BLOD was, I think, nicely shot; the makeup for the rabid fellows is bad.

No genuine suspense, excitement and gusto whatsoever.

'Death by hydrophobia is agony.'

The Village People massacre mammals...

[poe426 · 1/10 · 26 June 2010]

Revolting, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD is as good an argument as I've seen for censorship; it proves, again and again, that there are some movies that simply need never be made at all. What entertainment value is there in a succession of scenes of unbridled animal cruelty? (If you're one of those who pull over to examine roadkill just out of morbid curiosity, you'll feel right t' home here...) I won't soil my hands enumerating the atrocities to which viewers are made privy in this one, but I will say this: some very good production values are totally wasted here. Low budget, despite what these kind of films would suggest, does NOT mean "low brow." Unless your whole intent is simply to gross out the viewer. (In which case, this one's a howling success.)

So basically, this kid's a mass murderer, right?

[BigBabe0 · 5 February 2011]

Certainly Charles Manson deserves to be in prison the rest of his life, not just because of the murders committed by his "family" but for inspiring a bunch of movies about lethal Hippies, such as this one. (In the book "Fatal Vision," about an army doctor who tried to blame the death of his family on lethal Hippies, there's a line "Four people on acid couldn't even organize a trip to the bathroom, let alone a trip to go kill people.") The leader of this wild bunch is played by a 40-year-old Indian dancer (Indian Indian, not American Indian) who in fact is great, jacking far more enthusiasm into his performance than this flick really deserves. He detects the group ritual being gawked at by an outsider (as per the later and vastly superior "Race with the Devil") who then gets mauled by some of the group. This victim, Sylvia, staggers into the nearby largely abandoned town and collapses; the local baker woman, Mildred (this actress eerily resembles Audrey Campbell from the "Olga" series) assumes that the culprits are some nearby construction workers. Meanwhile the Hippies show up in the same town after their van breaks down, setting off the main revenge plot which is basically a reworking of "The Virgin Spring"/"Last House on the Left" (although the latter appeared a few years later). The "gimmick" here is that the Hippies and the construction workers get rabies, after Sylvia's younger brother Pete injects dead dog blood into some meat pies (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) eaten by the Hippies. According to a medical website, "contact with the blood, urine, or feces (e.g., guano) of a rabid animal, does not constitute an exposure...." But I guess we need to allow for some "artistic license..." As to whether "I Drink Your Blood" is worth your time, there's some nice violence, limited of course by the minimal budget; the mass shooting at the end is unfortunately all off camera. The actors playing the rabies victims have varying degrees of frothing at the mouth---by the way, according to that same medical website, "The rabies incubation period may vary from a few days to several years, but is typically one to three months"---in other words not an hour or less, as per the movie, but again, artistic license... Other than the Indian dude, the best performance is by Rhonda Fultz, who unlike most of the cast has a "real movie" on her credit list ("In Cold Blood"). Since she manages to inject some recognizable humanity into her character Molly, Molly's death (by her own hand) is more affecting than what happens to most of the others, plus her being pregnant and all. Bottom line, "Blood" passes the "free/beer" test---if you can see it for free and have plenty of beer handy, then yeah, go for it. By the way don't bother looking for that scary face on the video cover, it's actually from another movie....

A tasty rat-shish-kebab

[Chris_Docker · 7/10 · 6 August 2008]

There's a very good reason for film ratings. People could be influenced to do terrible things through watching acts of violence.

For instance, if you are the sort of person who has an innate tendency to hack other people to bits, hang them upside-down, and so on, I think it would be wrong for you to see this film. Similarly, if you happen to be a young boy who might be tempted to borrow your grandfather's gun, shoot a rabid dog, and then inject its blood into meat pies, I really don't think you should watch this. In fact please forget you read this in case it gives you ideas.

Then of course there's drugs. If this film encourages you to take psychedelic drugs irresponsibly, in the misguided belief that acting stupidly on them and killing your buddies is fun, then I can't imagine anything worse. As the man once said, don't take them – at all - buy your own like everybody else. Sit down with a copy of Timothy Leary's Politics of Ecstasy and have a life-expanding experience.

But on the off-chance that neither being a psychopath or a mystic runs in your blood, then it might even be quite safe to watch this movie. Secure in the knowledge that you won't be badly scarred and run out to rape and murder the girl selling popcorn in the interval. But is that a chance worth taking?? Watching the film on DVD however is also perhaps to be discouraged. You'll miss out on the hoots of laughter as your fellow grindhouse eclectics thrill to the awful dialogue and spurts of blood. You might worry about whether there is secretly something wrong with you for watching such stuff.

I was also rather concerned about the implication that some workmen had unprotected sex. Not even with each other. But with a young woman who, at one point is in the shower. And I don't think it is quite clear if her consent was properly obtained in advance about the shower element. Of course, it is one of those rare films that isn't based on a true story, so the main concern is whether it could incite similar behaviour. Since there are foolhardy people out there, it would obviously be better to ban all movies made in the 60's in which unprotected sex is implied, and no mention of the dangers of slipping on the soap given beforehand, during or afterwards..

Although it is fairly incidental, I will mention the plot for sake of completeness. Some low-life youngsters take lots of that LSD stuff and, after various indescribably horrible rituals, arrive in a town of about forty people, all of them nice mainstream types, pretty unintelligent except for the lad with a shotgun. After getting infected they start biting and chopping bits off anyone and generally making quite a scary time of it all.

It's quite a little gem in its way. The first American film to get an X certificate for violence.

Enjoy.

Responsibly of course.

Promises more that it can deliver

[tomgillespie2002 · 2/10 · 27 March 2011]

Originally shown as a 2-parter alongside I Eat Your Skin (you can see what they did there) in the Grindhouse theatres of the 60's and 70's, the film follows a group of Satanic hippies as they arrive in a ghost town, devoid of inhabitants due to a mining project nearby. They make themselves comfortable in one of the many abandoned homes and attack a young girl. Her grandpa goes apes**t and confronts the Manson family- esque group, only to be dosed with LSD and almost killed. The girl's young brother rescues the old man, and exacts revenge by infected a tray of mince pies with rabies (!), only for the remaining occupants of the town to one by one become infected by the disease and begin a rabid, frothy-mouthed killing spree.

I thought I'd seen it all when I struggled through s**t-fest Island Of Death, but I Drink Your Blood is another example of how the genius of Grindhouse flashed an exploitative and lie-filled title in my face, only for me to giddily clap my hands in excitement only to be exposed to the cinematic equivalent to an anal raping. At least Island Of Death had a little bit of gore to appease my blood lust, but this just has a bunch of hippies waving their hands around and spitting what looks like soap from their mouths. Even though the film was one of the first movies to receive an X-rating due to violence rather than nudity, it spends most of its time painfully building up to violence that never comes. Utter crud.

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Rabid Hippie-Satanists Are On The Loose - Grindhouse Cult!

[Witchfinder-General-666 · 7/10 · 21 January 2008]

"I Drink Your Blood" - Wow, what an awesome title is that? And not only the title is cool! David E. Durston's "I Drink Your Blood" of 1970 is a remarkably weird, gory, sleazy, cheesy, hilarious and totally awesome grindhouse feature with a deserved cult status among exploitation lovers.

• SPOILERS! - Trouble comes to a little town in form of a totally wacko cult of satanic hippies, lead by the demented Horrace Bones (Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury), a Native American Charles Manson. The LSD-addicted group, that furthermore includes a huge black guy named Rollo, an Asian woman who is a medium, a mute girl and a few others, hold of some bizarre rituals and molest a local girl (it's not quite clear whether they rape her or just beat her up). When the girl's grandfather wants to take them to task, he gets beaten up and drugged by the satanists, which makes his little grandson furious enough to make an (also quite devilish) plan. He shoots a rabid dog and mixes its blood into the meat-pies that the cult members are to eat - at which point the satanic hippies get infected with rabies and, one by another, flip out to go on a homicidal rampage...

This plot outline may sound utterly idiotic, but it is also the base for an extremely entertaining, hilarious and ultra-bloody trash flick that no fan of 70s exploitation cinema should miss. The leader of the satanic hippie cult, Horrace Bones was, of course, inspired by Charles Manson, whose 'Family' committed their terrible murders in the year before this movie was released. Apart from the murderous psycho Horrace, the rest of his illustrious cult is also quite peculiar. The little town where the story takes place is furthermore full of redneck miners (who were, quite possibly, also played by miners) who soon join in the rabid bloodshed fun. Most of the performances are very amateurish, which even increases the grindhouse feeling and makes the film more fun. Even the score fits in greatly with the rest of the film, although the music is often out of place (or probably for this reason).

It is hard to explain what exactly makes this film great - VERY blood-thirsty for the early 70s, this is a movie that must be seen. In case you don't like low-budget exploitation yo should probably avoid this, but in case you are a lover of rancid 70s grindhouse films like myself, yo can not afford to miss the blood-thirsty, gory fun and the many laughs this film provides. In Short - "I Drink Your Blood" is a flick that I highly recommend to any of my fellow lovers of gory exploitation flicks from the 70s!

Pass the barf bag

[angelsunchained · 1/10 · 13 December 2019]

About the worst piece of stinking garabage ever seen. Shocking? Nope. Gross? You bet. Seems everyone in this film and behind the lenses is tripping on acid. Enough said.

Rabid Satanic Hippies - HELL YEAH!!!

[EVOL666 · 8/10 · 29 August 2006]

I DRINK YOUR BLOOD is yet another film that I revisited after not having seen it in many years, and let me tell ya friends - this is what classic grindhouse cinema is all about. This is fun, trashy, sleazy, gritty, gory, exploitation goodness - and I love this sort of thing...

A group of Satanic hippies invade a small town where they rape a local girl. Her grandfather goes to find the punks to get revenge, but they end up dosing him with LSD instead! To avenge his sister and grandpa, a young boy injects rabies into some meat pies to give to the hippies!! The hippies eat the meat pies and become zombie-like cannibals and begin terrorizing the town!!!

Yeah - that's the real story - and it's GREAT. For the 1970 time-stamp, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD was pretty ahead of it's time. The gore, though cheezy, is pretty heavy in this one, the performances are quite decent for this type of film, and the camera-work is solid and effective. Also of note is the very PC and multi-cultural cast as far as the group of hippies is concerned - don't know if this was done purposely for any real reason, or if it just happened that way but I found it interesting. If you dig fun, sleazy exploit films - this one is definitely a safe and entertaining bet...8.5/10

one of *the* awesomely bad exploitation flicks of the early 70s; doesn't mean it's any good, but it's bad fun while it lasts

[Quinoa1984 · 6/10 · 1 May 2007]

David E. Durston's most readily available motion picture- which means it's the only one that isn't either an obscure porno or others- is I Drink Your Blood, a quickie made for peanuts and meant to be artful to those who have said peanuts in their brain. All you need to know: satanic hippies- a winning contradiction of course- find an abandoned house, beat up grandpa (who looks very oddly enough like Luis Bunuel), and the grandson gets angry enough to shoot a rabies infected dog, draw out its blood with a syringe, inject the blood into MEAT PIES (yes, meat pies, what kind of meat is meant as an eternal mystery), and the Charles Manson wannabes eat em up. The response: they all become, to one extent or another, ravaging quasi-zombies who go after the rural folk one by one, some with a pure ravenous delirium like the black hippie or the native American, and others who's madness grows more steadily (the women in the group). There's even one, I won't say who, goes almost Shaolin-style on the situation.

Filled with nobody actors who probably all knew they were going nowhere all the same (save perhaps for Lynne Lowry, who had somewhat of a successful B-movie career with her cat-eyes appearing later on in the Crazies), it's a cheapo attempt to cash in on Night of the Living Dead, but it does have some really f***ed up ambition going for it in hindsight: it's quite possibly the very first (un-official) Troma production. Spared all expense, I Drink Your Blood shoots its financial wad on what little special effects and gore and make-up there needs to be, and that alone. No need to get things like the *foam* from rabies infected people right, just dab some shaving cream. And why bother rehearsing (at least, that's what the way it seems of course), which is more than evident in possibly the worst child actor I've ever seen in a schlock fest playing the kid who starts this whole she-bang. Yet it is, living up to its hype, a very violent movie, however without a single socially redeeming statement in the process.

But unlike some other ultra-violent horror fests of the period (Last House on the Left immediately comes to mind), I Drink Your Blood isn't really out for loftier goals than to shock, and Durston's most significant achievement, if nothing else, is to make all of this bad crap really, hysterically funny, if only in big bursts amid scenes that are also, predictably, dull. The aforementioned Chinese character is the oddest one to have in a satanic LSD cult, though it's also a lot of fun seeing how sleazy the director can get in exploiting racial stereotypes. Of course, due to budget constraints, no "daring" exposes of what it MUST be like to trip, however just watching the hippies chow down on the meat pies is enough to get some chuckles. It might even make for a decent do-it-yourself Mystery Science Theater night, as the ultra-violent rabies-infected LSD-satanic-hippie movie was sort of left in the dust during the show's run.

Not as shocking as the title would have you think

[mhorg2018 · 1/10 · 12 September 2022]

A lot of the other reviewers must be lightweights. This film is neither shocking or amusing. What it is is simply exploitative trash. The 70's coming on the end of the opened up 60's tried to outdo that decade (no one was outdoing Night of the Living Dead, which did everything right) and mostly, like this, failed. Poor sfx with the worst blood ever. One silly situation after another. This uses one of the most over used tropes in film. The first is the bitter, insane Viet Nam Vet, this one uses Satanists. The group of baddied, poisoned by a kid with rabies tainted meat pies (who, when he confesses, says please don't tell grandpa. Some conscience this kid has, eh?) Seeing people with their eyes wide open, foaming at the mouth, afraid to go into water is hysterical. But everything else about this movie is mundane and forgettable.

"Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid head."

[Hey_Sweden · 8/10 · 11 November 2011]

What self respecting exploitation and horror fan is going to resist *that* title?

When a sadistic, Satan worshipping, hippie gang starts raising hell in a remote and tiny rural community, a local kid fights back by feeding them meat pies infected with blood he'd obtained from a rabid dog.

The result is an outrageous, wonderfully gory, trashy hippie horror hoot, directed for maximum shock value by David E. Durston. It definitely has a campy appeal as well as some twisted touches. The pace is always quite good, but things definitely get cranked up to a higher level for the intense and exciting finish. The cast, overall, is unsurprisingly not so hot, but Indian dancer Bhaskar plays his lead role with a delicious amount of creepy charisma. (And that's another thing: one's gotta love a character name like Horace Bones.) Highly noticeable among the supporting cast is delectable, uncredited young Lynn Lowry, in one of her earliest roles, a mute member of the gang. Director Durston also appears, uncredited, as Dr. Oaks.

Great music by Clay Pitts and enjoyable gore effects by Irvin Carlton are heavy assets. Along the way, we get to see a memorable decapitation, hands and feet chopped off, a pitchfork through the neck, a hanging, a stomach stabbing, self immolation, a gang member running around brandishing an axe, another one stabbed over and over again, and of course lots of foaming at the mouth.

Say what you will about "I Drink Your Blood", but one thing it's not is boring. It's extremely amusing throughout; in fact, it's downright hysterical at times. The influence of "Night of the Living Dead" is undeniable, but the truly wild 'n' crazy approach of "I Drink Your Blood" is all its own, and the story comes complete with the subtext of concerns of small town America over the whole hippie movement. Understandably a cult favourite, this does come highly recommended to newcomers to exploitation & horror flicks. Great fun.

Eight out of 10.

Rated X??

[noah-65732 · 7/10 · 16 November 2023]

I Drink Your Blood is the first film to be rated X for graphic violence so needless to say it's pretty hardcore for something made in 1970. The story follows a group of hippie Satanists who go to a small town and rough up a young woman and her grandfather then force-feed the grandfather LSD. The woman's kid brother takes revenge by extracting blood from a rabid dog and injecting it into meat pies that the hippie Satanists later eat; which in turn causes them to become rabid hippie zombies. The acting is horrific and the story is so full of plot holes that it's borderline incoherent. The gore effects are actually quite graphic for 1970 including severed limbs, a decapitation and a lot of blood (though not much actual blood drinking.) Realistically though, just look at the title; you know a film called I Drink Your Blood is not going to be superior filmmaking; just gritty, gory, grind house exploitation. If that's what you're looking for in a film than I Drink Your Blood is a flick for you.

Hippies + Satan + Rabies = Crap

[Doctor_Cheese · 3/10 · 15 October 2005]

"Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acidhead. Drink from his cup, pledge yourselves, and together we'll all freak out!" You would think any movie beginning with that kind of great dialogue -- spoken with an Indian accent, no less -- would be a magically awesome experience.

But "I Drink Your Blood," a ridiculous film about Satan-worshipping hippies who get infected with rabies, pretty much just goes downhill from there. What a shame.

I can recommend this movie only if you want to see lots of inane chatter, punctuated by machete-wielding flower children foaming at the mouth and attacking people. Also, you should enjoy bad acting and be able to endure quite possibly the crappiest, most annoying film score in the history of movies.

Otherwise, you could probably find something better to do with 83 minutes of your life.